Author AF Steadman is certainly someone who’s seen her dreams come true. She tells us about her lifelong passion for fantasy fiction, her joy at connecting with her readers - and about the indelible part that Kent plays in her work
When I meet children who tell me that they want to be authors, I take them very seriously. I don’t want to patronise them. When I was ten, I knew I wanted to be a writer and I know how important it is to be listened to.’
‘A.F.’ (Annabel) Steadman knows, too, that some of those children may well grow up to be published authors – after all, it happened to her. Back in September 2020, over an extraordinary two-week period, a bidding auction for her debut fantasy-adventure children’s series of books led to a seven-figure deal with publishers Simon & Schuster, plus a film deal with Sony pictures. Her first book, Skandar and the Unicorn Thief, topped best-seller lists both here and in the US and went on to become Waterstone’s 2022 Children’s Book of the year. Now aged 32, she’s not stopped since – but she certainly hasn’t forgotten her home county, either.
Horses were an important part of her childhood, too: ‘My mother rode for her university team, though I’ve always been a rather nervous rider: I know horses can be dangerous.’ That’s why, she thinks, she may have turned to horse-related unicorns – rather than dragons – when it came to creating the mythical creatures in her series. Having always considered them ‘rather silly’, though, it’s perhaps unsurprising that she subverted the traditional way in which unicorns tend to be perceived. Forget rainbows and sparkles – in A.F. Steadman’s books, they’re ferocious, blood-thirsty, and about as far from anything resembling My Little Pony as you can get. Add a Margate-born teenage hero, Skandar Smith, plus tales of elemental magic, sky battles and unicorn riders and the result is devoted readers worldwide.
After a degree in law and languages at Cambridge she went on to take a Masters in creative writing but headed back to law for work, still writing on the side, ‘as an escape from legal exams’. A novel about lawyers failed to find a publisher (‘I’m not surprised, but I still think it might work on TV,’ she says), and then, coming home from work one day, she had a vision about a boy riding a mythical creature. It was an idea that she couldn’t get out of her head, the boy evolved into her hero, Skandar Smith, the mythical creature became a very particular type of unicorn, and the book – the sort of children’s book she would want to read herself - was completed in three months.
She emailed the resulting draft of that first book, Skandar and the Unicorn Thief, to literary agent Sam Copeland with the words, ‘Bloodthirsty unicorns?’ in the subject line. ‘There are some people who’d immediately just bin that sort of email – but I know now that’s exactly the sort of thing that piques Sam’s interest.’ He immediately saw the book’s potential and advised her where it needed reshaping. ‘I don’t cry much, but the day he said it was ready to send out to publishers, I cried. The day I had my first offer for it, I cried too.’
Has the money she’s made changed her life? ‘It’s enabled me to know I can help my family if they need me to, and that’s one of the things that made me want to write in the first place – my mum heroically brought us three children up on her own, but we were very short of money. Above all, though, it’s enabled me to write full-time. I do want people to realise that writing isn’t some magical thing that just “happens”. It’s a serious job that requires the sort of hard work you’d expect of any other sort of job – something I always emphasise when I’m giving talks. I aim to make it clear, too, that the writing is part of a wider process – I’ll include a video of my books being printed, for instance,’
Undoubtedly the best thing about publication, she says, has been the reaction from her fans – when I speak to her, she’s received 25 letters that day alone. ‘It’s been incredible; they send not only comments and questions about the books but samples of their own writing and pictures – I’ve had ones made with Kent seaglass - and I’ll always aim to write back to every one. As a child, I wrote to the author Caroline Lawrence, whose Roman Mysteries I loved, and it meant so much to me that she wrote back and was encouraging, so I try to do the same.’ She also enjoys stories from school librarians, recounting Skandar books with post-it notes stuck on by children urging the next readers to ‘finish quickly so that others can borrow’, and about controlled sessions where the books can be discussed without any essential plot twists being given away. ‘That’s something I have to be very careful about when I’m giving talks about my work, too – I devise them very carefully to make sure there are no spoilers,’ says Annabel.
Children, she says, see her not as the ‘creator’ of the stories they love, but as someone equally invested in their outcome: ‘It amazes me when they tell me what they think is likely to happen in the books, as if I’m wondering about it, too, when I know how the story’s going to develop.’ She is also full of respect for their attention to detail: ‘I’ve had children point out detailed parts of the mythology they’ve noticed within the stories, so at proofing stage I tend to drive myself slightly mad, checking and cross-checking so I don’t get anything wrong.’
Annabel is involved in the upcoming film version of her books as an executive producer but doubts a film will be released before she’s finished her Skandar cycle – something that’s fine with her. ‘I’m delighted they’re taking things long and slow to make sure we get the right director, cast and crew working on the films. And I really like the idea that many of those who eventually come to the films will have arrived via the joy of reading – the books will have come first.’
Ultra-busy though she may be (TimeLess, her first adult fantasy novel, about time-travelling assassins set in a Cambridge frozen in the 1920s will be released in 2026), Annabel still makes time to read herself - Rainbow Rowell’s romance Slow Dance is currently on her bedside table, she says - while early choral music has been a consistent pleasure: ‘listening to or performing music as part of a choir, as I’ve done, uses an entirely different part of my brain from writing,’ she says, ‘allowing space for ideas to come.’
Though these days home for Annabel is with her husband Joseph in London, she manages flying visits to her brother and family in Kent whenever she can. ‘Deal, where my late grandfather had an ironmonger’s, is somewhere I always love to visit, especially the pier,’ she says. ‘The terrain of Kent, with it’s combination of coast, countryside and woods, is something that’s very much reflected in my books, and Skandar himself is from Margate, so there’s no doubt the county has influenced my work.’ As for her Kent fans: ‘I don’t think my readers in Ashford and Canterbury would forgive me if the towns weren’t on the schedule. I’m really looking forward to meeting more of them at Waterstone’s Canterbury and Bluewater in October, when I’ll be signing copies of the fourth book in the series, Skandar and The Skeleton Curse.’
Given that it’s been published six months early to meet public demand, there’s bound to be quite some queue. But when young readers do finally find themselves in front of A.F. Steadman, they can be sure of a response from her that’s as warm and enthusiastic as their own fandom: ‘I love writing for them – even when they’re critical they’re direct and honest about it, and most of the time they’re just nice. Children make the best readers.’
Meet AF Steadman in Kent on Saturday October 12, 10am at Waterstones Canterbury and 4pm Waterstones Bluewater
Skandar and the Skeleton Curse is out in hardback October 10, published by Simon & Schuster Children’s Books.
